Chapter 6

GEORGE

For a while, I did have a real boy to play with, right in the house. It happened this way:--

Martha, who is Aunty Edith's colored washerwoman in the city, had a boy called George, who used to bring the clothes home. He was a little older than me--twelve years old--and he was always smiling, and his teeth were white and his eyes shiny. And when his mother wrote Aunty Edith that he was poorly, Aunty Edith had him sent down for a week--on trial, to stay in the attic above my room, and do the dishes for the Aunties, and run errands. He was to stay longer, if it was all right.

I wish it had been, for George was awful funny. He was very obliging, too, and I liked him. So did Aunty May, for he remembered all the stories his teachers had told him in school, and he would tell them to Aunty May and me, when we sat down under the willow trees, and we just loved it.

What Aunty Edith didn't love was what he did with the green paint. Aunty Edith had a lot left over in a pot after the kitchen was painted, and she thought it would be nice to paint the chairs and tables that we used out of doors.

We used to have breakfast and lunch, and even dinner, out in the little grapevine-covered back porch, which had a cement floor, level with the ground.

So just to keep George happy, Aunty Edith gave him that to do. He commenced it while Aunty May and I were doing lessons, and we could hear Aunty Edith explaining--Aunty Edith always does the explaining--and George all the time saying, "Yas, 'm, yas, 'm, Miss Edith." And by and by Aunty Edith came in and we could hear George whistling and singing. George did sing awful loud, and funny songs, so you'd have to stop and listen.

This morning he kept singing something about a man named "Sylvester," and he kept singing out the same thing over and over again, till Aunty May said, "Oh, dear, I can't hear myself speak. Edith, will you quiet the blackbird?" And Aunty Edith called to George not to sing so loud, and he said, "Yas, 'm, Miss Edith"; and the next minute it began louder than ever.

Then Aunty Edith went downstairs to tell him to take his work farther away from the house.

She hadn't been gone a minute till we heard her say, "Oh, good gracious, what shall I do? Come here, George, and see if you can take it off." George kept saying, "Yas, 'm, Miss Edith, yas, 'm"; and Aunty Edith was being so very spluttery, that Aunty May and I leaned out the window, and then we jerked our heads in and Aunty May said, "Don't you dare laugh out loud, Billy."

Then we looked again, and jerked our heads inside the window every time we felt the laugh coming on, which was pretty often, for you see George had put the paint-can, a small one, right on the doorsill, and Aunty Edith had put her foot in it, and it had caught.

There was Aunty Edith holding on to the grape-arbor while George pulled at the can, and the paint flowing around pretty free. Well, George couldn't pull it off, and finally he had to take a can-opener and cut Aunty Edith's foot out, just as though she were salmon, or something.

When we got to that part, Aunty May and I forgot ourselves and laughed out loud, and then Aunty Edith looked at us, and looked at her foot, and at George's black face all daubed with green paint, and his clothes, too, as he carefully cut her out, and she laughed, too. But it spoiled her shoe, and it took several days to wear the green off George.

That was the too bad part of it. George was so fine for singing and telling stories and he just couldn't remember to do anything else.

When he went for the mail and the groceries, unless I went with him, he'd forget everything, and come home just as smiling as ever.

And he was brave, too, for he used to chase the village boys when they ran after him and called names, and besides that he and I built a lovely Filipino house up in the biggest willow tree, and had lots of fun, escaping from two boys at the farm across Rabbit Run Bridge, who chased us and tried to catch us. We got up in our tree-house and shot at them with bows and arrows, and they couldn't reach us. I liked having George. If he'd only stayed funny, without getting dangerous. But George got dangerous.

It was this way: George and the two boys on the farm, Samuel and Charlie Crosscup, were having a talk on the middle of Rabbit Run Bridge, about fire engines. Samuel said the East Penniwell fire engine could get up steam and run to a fire, with Sol Achers's old white horse hitched to her, quicker than a New York fire engine could. George and me said it couldn't. He said, "It could, because why? The East Penniwell horse and engine were used to the roads and the New York horses and engine would have to be showed."

I couldn't think of anything to say, but George said, "No, sah. Dat ain't noways so. For de New York fire engines and horses is so trained that they goes over any road and anywhere according as the Fire Chief he directs, and it doan mek no difference whether they've been up dataways befo' or not They jist naturally eats up all distances."

Well, that made the Crosscup boys mad, and they kept telling all about the East Penniwell engine house, and my! it must be a lovely place, if all they say is true. George he told them then about the New York engine houses, and my! they must be splendid if George really knew. He said he